The Best Crash Course on Copywriting You’ll Ever Get For Free ( Limited Time. Go. Go. Go!)
Jun 12, 2009 at 3:46 pm in KARMA by ian
Here is all you need to do:
Go check out this link on Ezine Articles ( an article I wrote and submitted a few minutes ago…..but skip reading it…..NOT the point of this exercise) and scroll down like I just did to check out the top 15 "most viewed" articles in this category over the last 90 days.
One of these articles has MORE views than any other article on the list. By FAR. And COMBINED. And the article itself is pretty ordinary……..nothing especially deep, profound or comment worthy about the content therein at all. As a matter of fact, if I was being a little less charitable than I like to be on a Freaky Friday at 5, I’d say the article itself stole 171 seconds out of my life I’ll never get back and gave me nothing in return. Nor probably will it you.
But the "reason why" reminds me of why MY articles in this category ( article marketing…..which ironically – is like my LEAST favorite niche to write articles about because NO ONE ever reads them) are not as good as they should be and need to be improved.
And how the art and science of writing titles that are both compelling, pragmatic and "magical" is still the BEST way to guarantee your stuff gets opened…and NO ebook, DVD or home study can give you what you can witness in REAL time for yourself. ( and copy for your own niche)
Again, and I don’t want to sort of spoil the fun, but what’s so funny is that MOST of the articles in the MOST viewed category for "article marketing" are owned by one guy who follows a very specific script and social networking sequence with each submission. (i.e. – it’s kind of "cheating" to get views)
He sort of monopolizes the whole space simply by writing, and then "Tweeting" his own stuff, and that drives people who are following him on Twiiter BACK to the article, which pads the numbers, and ultimately gives each of those submissions a perpetual place in the pantheon of popular articles. ( which further drives up their effectiveness as people WILL read selections from that section once they’ve finished the article that they landed on from the SERP’s to begin in)
Which is ok………and while it’s a tad cheesy, it’s a smart strategy for sure….and one that is well worth emulating if you’re NOT doing it right now.
I’ve tried doing that myself but whenever I see my articles pop up on my twitter feed, it sort of makes me uncomfortable because I genuinely don’t like looking at my internet marketing content once it’s done……especially someplace like Twitter where I worry many of the movie stars that will eventually be following me will not understand what a resource box is, and ultimately, will kill any chance of getting my 3 screenplays published that will one day make me very famous and a regular on Larry King live, which is my true destiny in this particular lifetime.
The point though is – even with ALL of that above – one of the articles you’ll see in that section has a cumalative view count that is literally like 3000% higher than the rest – and without doing the heavy math, looks to probably be DOUBLE the rest of them combined. See if you can identify which one it is without cheating.
( I know – I probably gave away too much above)
And then figure out the very BEST way to do the same thing in any and every niche you are in right now……it’s the best way that I know of to get a massive amount of traffic in any niche, and in this one……I’m just sorry it wasn’t mine!
Here is the article again ( mine…..but disregard it and just scroll down to the 15 most popular) and see if you can quickly identify which one of these has made ONE article marketer very happy for sure!
Yes, it indeed was there, but now it’s not. Might EZA grant some bonus to the fresh articles?
Or, perhaps I just missed something…
Let me do a guess… Are you promoting your visit count to your article by telling about somebody elses’ tactics of promotion? Kinda manipulative trick, no? Anyways, cheers to you, smart guy!
Very, very cynical Sergey……but YES, that was the benefit of using my article as the link to view the “quiz”…rather than just the generic page. But NO….that wasn’t the point – the article was “http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Submit-Your-Articles-to-200-Directories-in-3-Minutes&id=2179421″ – and it has close to 4000 views in two months – which is super tough in this niche. ( as a matter of fact – if you look at some of the other “top” articles in “article marketing” they have only been read a few hundred times over the same period – the IM niches are NOTORIOUSLY “heavy lifting’ from the standpoint of interest – and why I personally prefer other means of promotion for IM related offers when I do them – which is rare – other than for my own stuff)
The articles I was referring to per the Twitter approach – are NOT those either – I probably worded it confusingly badly – that is a different popular author in the “article marketing guru” niche who uses that approach to drive up his numbers – which is a smart and savvy approach too.
But…..that said – in looking again today – the guy who wrote the “how to submit your articles to 200 directories in 3 minutes or less” above – ALSO has another article in that list that I didn’t see…..also has close to 4000 views – which makes me think that he may be “gaming” the system a bit as well – ( i.e. – using social networking style submissions and the resulting traffic that it generates) so…..my whole point could be moot.
So it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle – however – the KEY to writing compelling titles is ALWAYS – make a HUGE promise – a MAGICAL benefit – or a DIRE warning……and more times than not – you will get tons of curiosity interest in what you’ve got to say – i.e. – ” How to Pack on 12 pounds of rock hard muscle without ever breaking a sweat” .
(which I could use right now to be honest with you)
Hey, whats annoys me most with many articles is that they do NOT add a hard-link to their site or whatever they are promoting, instead they do “Click Here” or Add Two links of two Different keywords.
What if someone came by, copied the article to add it as content on one of their blogs? You just lost a back link there because the links aren’t active.
Oh well, less competition for me =)
It’s a good point – but it also sort of depends on your objectives – i.e. – if I’m optimizing for click through rate – using a hard link URL blows from the standpoint of generating clicks. However – as you said – lots of people do exactly what you described and you lose the visibility by NOT having it referenced at all – which is why EZA will recommend you have one of each.
Interestingly though – I had a bit of a fallout over this issue with someone who runs a pretty well known blog ( and it was posted on EZA’s blog about a year ago as an open Q & A where I chimed in with my side of the story….it’s still there I just can’t find it as I’ve been drinking since noon) who was publishing MY stuff – on HER blog – with HER name, pic, etc – next to my articles…..was including my name of course – but because I had no hard URL and just keywords in my resource boxes – her “editor” was stripping out my links and she thought that was ok. ( cause I hadn’t included a URL – only keywords which I had optimized based on a pretty well tested box)
I got pissed (after being super nice and being told by her “editor” to “fix” my resource box so she could reprint my shit better – and once I get upset and threatened to head butt her whole office like Jack Bauer in season 4 of 24 – she wrote C. Knight at EZA – and he posted a little “anonymous” Q and A about it on their blog – and the bottom line is that regardless of what you post in the box – hard url or not – it’s got to be a live link)
I understand your point though ( people don’t care about TOS and simply post it that way anway) but in my experience, the traffic from those blogs is SO negligible for so many niches that it’s far smarter to optimize for CTR on natural search – then the occassional straggling visitor you get from a blogger blog whose scraping content for 12 cent adsense clicks.